That is REALLY frustrating. Yes, I think that the sudden heat may be a factor. Bringing in may help. The other consideration is water... With those temperatures, daily or even twice daily watering may be necessary. Stanhopeas do hate to dry out. Also, if it is dry, you'll get some evaporative cooling. But you may need to just bring it inside. Once the spikes have started to develop, they likely don't need the variation of temperature, light, etc that they get outside.

Now, I 'm just guessing... since my conditions are so different. Hopefully, some of our members in Texas and other hot areas will jump in with suggestions.

This is 100% the problem and why I don’t grow Stanhopea here in Texas, even though it’s one of my favorite genera.

Ooooo… so what temperature would you recommend bringing them in at? I have 2 outdoors in Texas (Stanhopea connata 'Orangeade X tigrina 'Predator' FCC/AOS and Stanhopea tigrina ‘Sanbar black on white’). Both of these are very large plants and I hope will bloom this year.

Or, it is possible to leave them outdoors but water everyday? I also want to install a misting system this summer in my shade house.
https://i.imgur.com/LkmCete.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/9uM3e9K.jpg

Don't know the ideal temperature to bring them in... Given the size, the later the better, of course. (Maybe you could hang them over the bathtub to make watering less messy) I suspect that as long as you can give them shade, the temperature becomes less critical if you can keep them wet. I'd definitely defer to anybody who grows these in a truly warm climate... mine grow under a much more benign temperature range so I don't know where the limits might be. I know that they are grown quite well much farther inland in southern California, where there are triple-digit (F) days, but nights do still cool off, and June/early July they still get some June gloom. Thinking of the Huntington Botanical Gardens.

So go for shade and copious water, misting if you can, you might just get away with it! Those look like really healthy plants. Wishing you success!

---------- Post added at 02:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:12 PM ----------

In fact, thinking about it, you might send an email to Brandon Tam at the Huntington and find out what he does. It's not quite Texas, but summers get pretty hot there and the Stanhopeas do quite well. If you can't find his email in Orchids (or other AOS source) or in the Orchid Digest, PM me and I can provide.

Thanks for the info. Hopefully I can get a misting system installed in the next month. All the weather articles I’ve read say El Niño should make for a cooler and wetter summer 🤞🏼. I will say it’s been a fairly mild start to spring and summer so far, but definitely by July we will probably be hitting triple digits and 80s at night.

Last summer I did in fact water it twice daily, and have resumed that now that the weather is getting warmer. I'm sure that helps a great deal, but it doesn't seem like it helped enough :( And it grows hanging under my porch where it doesn't get any direct light.

I'll contact this Brandon Tam and find out what I can find out. Thanks for your help, everyone! I haven't been on here in a long time, but I know I can always get good info when I ask something here.

Welcome back! Brandon is the manager of the Huntington Botanical Gardens orchid collection. Extremely knowledgeable, and very responsive. He has contributed often to both Orchids and Orchid Digest. And the Stanopeas in the collection are awesome - and many of them grown outdoors.

They'll take our heat and grow just fine, but the flowers won't open after our daytime temps get to 93 degrees or so. No amount of shade or water matters. Trust me, I've tried. :_(

I wonder if the night temps are the culprit... That's the big difference between Texas heat and California heat. The inland valleys in southern California routinely get a lot hotter than 93 deg F in the summer. (I spent about 25 years of my life in that area, and hope to never do it again :roll:) But summer nights are only rarely above the mid 70's F and usually in the 68-72 deg F range.

Brandon Tam spoke to our society a few years back. You can find my lecture notes with an advanced search on his name and my username (or partial username if you can't type the accent.) The gist is the Huntington has their Stans in baskets of moss in the coolest part of the coolest greenhouse, and they're watered automatically twice a day on a drip system with RO water.